The Regulatory State Under Pressure

The regulatory state is under pressure from three developments. First, the very real political power of large private entities to make and implement rules is more visible than ever, and its rise has tracked an alarmingly intense increase in inequality in both the Global South and the industrialized North, making the salience of redistributive issues a central issue in the politics of the regulatory state that can no longer be realistically sidelined or bracketed out of regulatory decision-making practices. Secondly, the altered power relationships between states, including in particular the rise of China, with its greater attachment to centralized discretionary state command, is changing the incentives for institutional diffusion, encouraging adaptations of developmental state approaches over the more market-oriented regulatory state focused on creating infrastructure for efficient markets. Third, the ongoing salience of crises to the development of regulatory state trajectories has increased in scope, scale and regularity: so much so that something of a sense of ‘permanent emergency’ is almost emerging, or at the very least the invocation of unusual powers to deal with crisis situations is developing a routinization of its own. Combined, these three factors make it increasingly unconvincing to depict apolitical technocratic expertise as a central facet of governing through regulation. Despite this, other developments continue to steer regulatory dynamics towards rule-based governance, albeit in institutional settings and forms increasingly different from the traditional regulatory agency. Data-driven code, certification codes and standards administered by civil society and non-state actors, as well as an increasing public sector preference for using monetary incentives rather than prescriptive rules, together mean that a complex hybrid of rules and deals is emerging that looks quite different from the narrative cross-national diffusion of independent regulatory agencies that dominated the 1990s and early 2000s In short, at a macro-political level the regulatory state is increasingly undermined, fragile or less relevant; yet at the level of detailed governance dynamics within a particular sector, it is ever more relevant, albeit with more complex, fragmented and distributed institutional outlines. The combination of these two trends makes for unsettling times for the regulatory state

Comparative Regulatory Regimes in Water Service Delivery: Emerging Contours of Global Water Welfarism?

This paper explores one particular dimension of broader global policy issues concerning water resources: the regulatory governance aspect of delivering water services to ordinary citizens in urban contexts for domestic use. Water provision, as with many other areas of collective provision, is increasingly shaped by attempts to embed social facets into the expansion of transnational markets: part of the incremental growth of \u27globalisation with a human face\u27. The paper first summarises nascent transnational institutional developments in policymaking and provision around urban water services delivery. It stresses that this process is still heavily dependent on national and local state institutions, particularly domestic regulatory institutions. The paper then elaborates a theoretical framework frames empirical findings from case studies of the regulatory governance of water services in Bolivia, Chile and Argentina during the 1990s and early 2000s. These case studies illustrate how transnational dynamics create a regulatory intersection of social policy and global governance. This pattern could be emblematic of potential trajectories of transnational regulatory politics in areas beyond water (most obviously other public utilities such as gas and electricity, but also health and education)

Comparative Regulatory Regimes in Water Service Delivery: Emerging Contours of Global Water Welfarism?

This paper explores one particular dimension of broader global policy issues concerning water resources: the regulatory governance aspect of delivering water services to ordinary citizens in urban contexts for domestic use. Water provision, as with many other areas of collective provision, is increasingly shaped by attempts to embed social facets into the expansion of transnational markets: part of the incremental growth of \u27globalisation with a human face\u27. The paper first summarises nascent transnational institutional developments in policymaking and provision around urban water services delivery. It stresses that this process is still heavily dependent on national and local state institutions, particularly domestic regulatory institutions. The paper then elaborates a theoretical framework frames empirical findings from case studies of the regulatory governance of water services in Bolivia, Chile and Argentina during the 1990s and early 2000s. These case studies illustrate how transnational dynamics create a regulatory intersection of social policy and global governance. This pattern could be emblematic of potential trajectories of transnational regulatory politics in areas beyond water (most obviously other public utilities such as gas and electricity, but also health and education)

Contested Common Space, Regulation and Inclusion at the Coogee Women’s Pool

This article concerns two disputes that occurred between 2020–22 at the Coogee Women’s Pool, a public ocean pool in Sydney reserved for use only by women. One contest concerned the governance of the pool by its Management Committee related to differing conceptions of the ethos of the pool and the nature of its custodianship. The other concerned the exclusion of trans women from the pool over the definition of ‘women’ allowed access to the facility. The article examines these disputes and the contests they generated in exploring when and how forms of law encourage or undermine relational regulation in the context of community-controlled public space. It draws on ideas about the commons elaborated by Silvia Federici and the concept of ethos articulated by Ivan Illich to understand the nature and value of community-controlled public space. The article links these ideas to the role of law in engaging with scholarship on the right to the city and rights to protest in relation to the commons. It draws on this framing, and uses interviews, primary and secondary sources, to closely study the recent history at the Women’s Pool regarding governance of common space and issues of inclusion within the space. In looking at how law was used in relation to both aspects, it finds the idea of relational regulation helpful. The article suggests that light touch relational regulation might support the ethos of managed communal spaces, making room for deliberative practices that facilitate the resolution of challenging questions of membership and participation. The events in this small space of recreation prefigure possibilities for deliberation, care and (re)enchantment as a counter to neoliberal ordering

Using insights from regulatory theory to reinforce national and global climate governance mechanisms

Workshop paper prepared for the workshop ‘Building the Hinge’, 5-7 December 2013, Alwar, India.Process-based certification schemes are one way forward in Monitoring Reporting and Verification (MRV) for climate change. A certification scheme for national climate management systems would require countries to establish a climate policy, set national goals and timetables, secure resources to implement related national actions and track their progress, and would support rather than police developing country climate policy progress. Certification can mitigate concerns over intrusion into national sovereignty, but over time it can also have perverse side-effects. This paper examines certification approaches to MRV, and posits a scheme towards clarification of issues for outsiders, without over-simplifying the details for experts

Are you being MRV’D? : seeing like a planet and the regulatory challenges of governing climate change policy in emerging economies

Workshop paper presented at the Annual Meeting of Law and Society Association, 2-5 June 2014, Boston, USA.This conference paper addresses new forms of climate change governance and how they differ from traditional approaches. It focuses on understanding the emerging shape and content of systems of monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV systems) of progress on carbon reduction goals that are being established at both national and international levels. In essence these are bottom-up approaches that seek to avoid the risks of stalled global treaty negotiations, while continuing to build a new more inclusive North-South basis. The paper explores three regulatory challenges of the ‘bottom-up’ approach, and how MRV systems can facilitate new governance relationships

What does a right to repair tell us about our relationship with technology?

This article examines the recommendations of the recent Productivity Commission Inquiry regarding the right to repair through the lens of social issues surrounding the right to repair movement. It describes the right to repair movement in Australia and globally and examines which repair practices are considered important by the Commission, and the limitations of the Commission’s preoccupation with existing repair markets. It also discusses changing notions of ownership and their effects on repair practices

A study of the existing sources of information and analysis about Irish emigrants and Irish communities abroad

This study provides background data and analysis for the Task Force report on Policy concerning Emigrants. It brings together different sources of information and analysis in order to provide a statistical and analytical portrait of the three constituent populations that form the concern of the Task Force: Irish emigrants, returnees and Irish communities abroad. It analyses a wide range of sources of information in Ireland and each country of destination in order to provide as full a range as possible of interpretations of the causes and circumstances of contemporary Irish emigration, return migration and the needs and condition of Irish communities abroad